Highlights include HK$10 billion stabilisation fund, more money for prescription drugs and higher allowances for doctors and support staff
Hong Kong's overloaded health sector emerged as one of the biggest winners in the budget yesterday, receiving morale-boosting measures worth a total of HK$80.6 billion in recurrent expenditure - a sharp rise of more than 10 per cent from last year.
One move that won praise was the creation of a new HK$10 billion stabilisation fund to help the Hospital Authority weather financial storms.
The sum was equivalent to about two months of spending by the authority, which runs the city's public hospitals.
A government source said it set up a safety net for the health care sector in the event the government was unable to provide sufficient funding, for example during an economic downturn.
Delivering his budget speech yesterday, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said: "I have noticed many people from the public and private medical sectors, even university professors, have expressed worries about future resources. Creating the fund is meant to give everyone an assurance."
He said the public health sector would be able to tap the fund immediately, should the government face a funding shortfall because of any unexpected circumstances.
The government source would not say whether the idea stemmed from a similar proposal made by University of Hong Kong Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, who had called for a HK$50 billion safety net.
But the source stressed various suggestions for some kind of stabilisation fund had been tossed around during the consultation period for this year's budget.
Yuen, a top microbiologist, said he was not disappointed about the stabilisation fund being smaller than what he had suggested. "I think HK$10 billion is already pretty good," Yuen said. "The Hospital Authority has been treated very well this time."
The Society for Community Organisation, a non-governmental organisation, welcomed the move, but a spokesman expressed doubt on whether the fund could really help the most pressing areas in the system.
He suggested the authority be allowed to use the HK$10 billion to develop health services that responded to changes in demand.
The stabilisation fund was among a raft of measures aimed at soothing the city's manpower-starved public medical sector, which has resulted in overworked doctors, nurses and other staff protesting strenuously at being overwhelmed by the large number of patients during the recent peak flu season.
Praising their professionalism and passion in serving the community, Chan set aside HK$80.6 billion for the public health system - 10.9 per cent more than last year and accounting for 18.3 per cent of the government's total recurrent expenditure.
The Hospital Authority's usual annual subvention would also rise to HK$68.8 billion, up more than 8 per cent from the previous year. The authority would also get additional recurrent funding of more than HK$700 million to implement measures to help retain staff. The source expected allowances for doctors on call to rise by 55 per cent, while working staff could look forward to a higher overtime rate. Some 16,000 support staff could expect pay increases, and more than 200 posts for senior nurses would be added.
A doctor from Tuen Mun Hospital's department of medicine and geriatrics welcomed the increased allowances and overtime pay, but said they would not completely solve the staffing problem.
What was needed, he said, was more staff to share the heavy workload.
Medical sector lawmaker Dr Pierre Chan said the financial secretary did not address the issue of long working hours faced by frontline staff and he was unimpressed by the potential increase in allowances for on-call doctors.
To improve the provision of medicines in public hospitals, the authority would get HK$400 million in additional recurrent funding to expand the list of prescription drugs available.
Another HK$5 billion was earmarked to hasten the upgrading of critical medical equipment such as PET scan devices and new technology for cancer treatments.
Beyond the public hospitals, Chan also announced an allocation of HK$1.2 billion to implement the Hong Kong Genome Project. He also earmarked over HK$150 million to set up the first primary health care centre in Kwai Tsing before expanding to other districts.
A note of dismay came from the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, which said it was regrettable that the government did not highlight any measure to improve the training of medical specialists.
The Hospital Authority chairman, Professor John Leong Chi-yan, meanwhile, welcomed the budget, expressing gratitude to the government.
He said the authority was planning a series of measures to boost morale, ranging from increments for nurses who obtained specialist qualifications to adding more positions for pharmacists.